o ISBN 0-596-00281-5

o Publisher: O'Reilley

o "link": http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython2/

I'm paying this book the ultimate compliment. I'm buying a copy for myself. In fact, I own a copy of the first edition of "Learning Python":http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython/, published in 1999. I used it to supplement the online python tutorials available on the "python"::http://www.python.org website. Since 1999 the python language has had syntactic extensions and the second edition of Learning Python has grown to embrace these changes.

Python is an elegant and easy-to-learn interpreted, interactive, object-oriented computer language created by Guido van Rossum. Python stresses readability, simplicity, and explicit programming and is famous (or infamous) for its use of whitespace to delineate programming blocks (rather than curly braces as in C or Pascal or line numbers as in BASIC or FORTRAN). Available to the Python user are a wide range of programming tools including object inheritance (even multiple inheritance), functional programming (lambdas), robust exception handling, and a large python module library. Also of note is that a Python user can pick and choose which of these tools they want to use for themselves.

Python has gained additional optional language features over time. As of the time of this review, the newest released Python was version 2.3. In 1999 when the first edition of Learning Python was published the stable python was version 1.5. Most python programs written in the python 1.5 era still run with little or no modification as most changes have been optional additions. However, many of these additions (such as list comprehensions) simplify a Python user's work and are worth learning.

The first edition of Learning Python was a light 366 pages of which 212 was a description of the language and grammar of Python and the remaining book was an overview of the available Python library. As the python language has added more syntactic sugar the Learning Python book has grown to 591 pages, with the first 436 pages devoted to language concepts. Fortunately the core language section of the book has been further subdivided into chapters which clearly demark which sections are "Advanced" topics and can therefore be passed over the first time through. Although the added bulk is unfortunate, these advanced subjects provide useful clarifications and techniques that can increase the users savy once the reader digests the core concepts. Also some of the text explains changes in the Python language since the 1.5 version days and these are neccessary as much 1.5-era python code is still in use.

Later chapters in the book explain how to accomplish common tasks using Python's standard library and new python frameworks such as Jython. Excerpts of two of these chapters are available online from O'Reilly for your review:

The text is peppered in useful examples - rarely do a reader's eyes have to trudge through more than five lines of text before sample code and results bless the page. Each section of the book includes exercises and an appendix includes solutions. The book is useful for a newcomer with little computer programming experience and for a seasoned python veteran who wants to review the evolutionary changes to python in the last five years.

A worthy companion to the now hefty Learning Python is the aptly named "Python Pocket Reference': http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonpr2/ also by O'Reilly.

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